Monumental

Northern Maine is a vast wilderness of lakes and dense forests with very few paved roads but plenty of watch-out-for-moose signs.  Those who live outside the state and have never set foot in Maine may be familiar with the name Katahdin, the northern terminus of the 2,000+ mile long Appalachian Trail.  The mountain, whose Abenaki name means Highest Land, lies in Baxter State Park.  In the summer of 2016, President Obama created a national monument just east of there.  It is called Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument, and it could be America’s next national park. 

The Antiquities Act of 1906, signed into law by Teddy Roosevelt, gives the president the authority to create a national monument without the need to consult Congress.  The law was created to preserve Ancestral Puebloan ruins in the Southwest and to impose harsh penalties for pothunters looting archeological sites.  The wording is vague, yet leak-proof.  It grants the president the authority to protect any significant natural or cultural feature deemed important to the nation and its history.  By signing a piece of paper, he can set aside a tract of land, no matter how large or small, to be preserved and protected by the National Park Service.  The Grand Canyon was initially preserved in this manner.  

  

This type of executive power is unprecedented within our democracy.  Every president, with the exception of Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump, has utilized the Antiquities Act.  Its opponents see this law as over-reaching and chock up these proclamations as land grabs.  Trump plans to review over 20 national monuments, including Katahdin Woods and Waters, to see if he can shrink them and give the land back to local owners.  I received blanket-emails from companies like REI advising members to speak out for their national monuments that are under threat.  During my day off, I drove three hours north of Acadia National Park to see this land our last president set aside.

 

I tried to plug in my destination in Google Maps, but the GPS didn’t recognize the monument.  Hanging on my wall is a state map that shows a blank, roadless spot next to the green-shaded rectangle of Baxter State Park.  I had to look up written directions from the National Park’s website, which had very little content, except for a downloadable road and trail map, which I used to navigate after I got off the interstate north of Bangor. 

Once I reached the town of Medway, I turned left onto Swift Brook Road, an active logging road that springs from a bend in the highway.  I could have easily missed the turn, as there was no sign.  Usually there are brown signs that guide drivers to their national parks and monuments.  Even the remote monuments on Arizona’s Navajo reservation are labelled clearly.  Later, I discovered Paul LePage, the governor of Maine, purposefully did not erect any road signs outside the monument because he doesn’t support its existence and sides with Trump’s plans to diminish our public lands.  Woodrow Wilson shrunk a national monument for military purposes during World War I, but other than that no president has tried to undo a former president’s preservation work until now.

The simple explanation behind Trump’s review of the national monuments boils down to local economies in desperate need of resuscitation.  During his campaign, Trump held a rally in Bangor, Maine and promised the 3,500 people there that he would try to erase Obama’s unjust seizure of “their” land.  There isn’t much industry in northern Maine except logging and potato farming.  As minimum wages rise, this produced a hiring shortage in many of Maine’s restaurants, many of which are not open year-round and are profitable only for three months.  Most places elect to hire foreigners from Eastern Europe or the Caribbean, who live and work in Maine during the brief summer.  I know a handful of people who choose to commute nearly two hours every weekend from Orono to Mount Desert Island because the money is better along the coast.  There are few jobs for locals around Katahdin, but most national monuments create new opportunities and draw in crowds that would otherwise skip the area entirely.  The establishment of the monument is, after all, why I decided to go there. 

I was driving a hybrid down a gravelly, pot-holed road in the dark with only a bare-bones map to guide me.  Eventually, I knew I needed to turn left, but I had no idea when.  I reached a fork in the road with a small wooden sign that pointed straight toward the Kathadin Loop Road.  Each path wasn’t quite a turn, nor would I describe any path as being straight ahead.  The straight-ish path was more of a slight right turn, and the left path looked like the same road I had been travelling, so I interpreted that as being straight, the first of many wrong turns. 

I drove by a few monstrous machines with pincers and giant saw blades next to piles of felled trees.  The tires churned up the timber litter which rattled against the under-carriage and made sounds like little toy drums.  The heavy machinery should have been an obvious sign that I was heading in the wrong direction, but I pressed on for another fifteen minutes and chugged along at the rate of fifteen miles per hour.  My high beams were on, and I was alert for signs of moose but saw none.  The GPS reading showed me far south of my destination, so I turned around until I reached the junction I initially botched.  I followed the correct course over a wooden bridge marked by a sign that read:  “This bridge owner says NATIONAL PARK NO!” Eventually I found my way to the campground just before midnight.

I wore dark jeans and a long-sleeve red-and-black-checked flannel shirt to evoke the spirit of the northern lumbermen.  This costume, although fitting for the part of wanna-be woodsman, proved to be practical, as the mosquitoes were relentless.  The campsite was located only a short walk next to a deadwater, where the bugs swarmed and hardly a wind blew over the black swamp.  I collected a pile of twigs and retrieved from the car a bundle of wood, which was plastic-wrapped and purchased from a Hannaford’s grocery store. 

I sprinkled shavings of dried bark onto shredded notebook paper and cardboard and lit the paper on fire with a Bic lighter.  At first only the edges of the paper smoldered as magma-red edge travelled down the sheet as though the paper were consuming itself.  Some of the twigs were damp from the ever-present Maine rainstorms, and the small cone of fire would rise quickly and snuff itself out.  I grew frustrated and flicked the lighter again and again against my thumb until a blister formed.  I gathered more wood and reorganized the pile of kindling.  I got down on my stomach and blew into the smoke with measured bursts of breath until a fire crackled and then grew large enough to handle split logs.  I roasted and ate three chicken sausages before retiring into the tent, where I read a chapter from Henry David Thoreau’s The Maine Woods. 

In the excerpt, Thoreau is talking to an Abenaki Indian named Joe, who led the writer all through the north country from Moosehead Lake and up the Penobscot and Allagash Rivers.  They are about to make camp, not far from where I lay.  Joe sets up the tent under a partially dislodged tree, which Thoreau inspects to test its sturdiness.  He then asks Joe if he thinks this spot to be a good idea.  Joe shrugs.  Thoreau then tells him it’s a common accident for a man to be killed by a felled tree on a windy night.

Roxanne Quimby, who owes her fortune to Burt’s Bees skincare products, bought up this Thoreauvian land from timber companies and donated the monument, along with a $40 million endowment for its care, to the American people.  The monument roads are still unpaved, but a small car can handle them so long as there hasn’t been heavy rainfall.  From the loop road, there is a vantage point where one can see the blueish crown of Katahdin and a smattering of lakes under hazy, overlapping peaks.  Some of the trails begin as former logging roads.  While hiking on one of these, I compared the nature of Thoreau’s travels through the northern woods to my own explorations through America’s national parks. 

If there is a pinnacle of wildness, it is the ability to live off the land without aid from society.  This is a skill we all once possessed as early humans but nearly all of us has lost.  When Thoreau went on his voyage with Joe, they brought their own rations of pork, sugar, coffee, etc.  Thoreau asked his guide if he could live like his ancestors who foraged berries, fished, and hunted deer and moose.  In 1857, the Indian replied he couldn’t and that he must bring his own provisions into the woods, for he was raised that way and could not teach himself to do otherwise.  How far removed are we from our self-sufficient ancestors? 

Sometimes I boast a little about making a fire or completing a lengthy backcountry hike, but I am dependent upon man-made products.  I buy my food from the grocery store and build my fire with store-bought logs and a lighter.  I have no idea how to gut a fish, or how to create fire with friction from sticks.    When I am out on the trail, I am usually following blue markers on trees or signs pointing me in the right direction.  I fill up my Camelbak at the visitor center’s water fountain.  I have a healthy fear of grizzly bears, flash floods, and lightning strikes, and I have developed a preference, overall, for the great indoors.  Some national parks are truly wild, but they only give the average person the illusion of his own wildness.

My summer-so-far in Acadia has softened me since the last year I spent living at 8,000 feet on the edge of Bryce Canyon.  I used to do 15-20 mile hikes in the desert heat, or in the frigid high country.  I traversed the Grand Canyon, from rim to rim to rim, in only two days.  I drove down sandy roads with storm clouds brewing overhead and often considered what I would do if I were stuck in the muddy back country with zero cell service.  I often packed a few gallons of water in my car for this exact scenario, which happened to me.  I crawled under my car and dug out my tire with my hands.  I squeezed through narrow slot canyons, sometimes with water up to my neck.  I slept alone in a tiny tent in lonely canyon an hour’s drive from the nearest town.  Each time I made it home, I felt like a real conqueror, brimming with confidence.

Acadia’s hikes, on the other hand, are often two miles long.  Once you reach the peak, you can often see the road you drove in on.  There are no animals worth fearing, and there is no backcountry:  nowhere to get lost.  Kathadin Woods and Waters National Monument, however, offers plenty of opportunities to question whether you are heading in the right direction.  I ambled along the former logging road with no clear purpose.  My senses were attuned for signs of wildlife.  I saw a bright red bird flitting from branch to branch.  I wish I knew its name. 

Evidence of moose was everywhere.  Their heavy hooves left deep impressions in the soil, and their mounds of scat littered the trail.  I walked slowly and kept my head up and peered into the meadowy gaps between the woods.  Often I hike too quickly.  I seek a parkour-like experience, but sometimes I need to remind myself to lose my sense of hurry and to let time slip away.  The national parks and monuments were created for this very purpose—not only to preserve the land but our own mental health. 

When I reached the Wassataquoik Stream at Orin Falls, I met two ladies from Houlton, the last interstate town on the border of Maine and New Brunswick.  They were familiar with Baxter’s hikes, but this was their first time in the new national monument.  I asked them why the locals were so opposed to its creation. 

“Most people around here don’t want the federal government telling them what to do,” one of the ladies said.

Before last year, locals were free to hunt or to ride their ATVs and snowmobiles, but now these activities are no longer permitted and are punishable.  I, too, would be annoyed if somebody took away those privileges, especially if I were born and raised in a small town where the mentioning of the federal government elicits mostly scorn.  I also have sympathy for the laborers who have lost their jobs in the waning timber industry.  Although I realize its necessity, as I rely on paper every day, I have also seen its ugliness and cannot wholly celebrate the process. 

Thoreau asks which man better appreciates the tree:  the poet who writes about it or the lumberman who cuts it down?  His bias is obvious.  While I’m reading a paperback book, I rarely consider the trees felled for my pleasure.  Seeing a bundle of dead trees next to a thriving forest is a sorry site.  Consider the peacefulness of the birds, who know nothing of the incessant complaints that consume us.  To envision their homeland being destroyed for our sake is enough to make even an impatient man air-dry his hands rather than use a paper towel.  Cutting down trees is not a pretty business, and most people are willing to let it happen, so long as it doesn’t happen in their backyard. 

“You live in Acadia,” one of the ladies said, “yet you chose to come here?”

I explained that I wanted to get away from the crowds.  Mount Desert Island is beautiful, but the place is often overrun with tourists.  The ladies continued their hike, and as I walked I smacked my calves, unprotected against the endless barrage of mosquitoes.  I smothered my legs in cold mud for relief against the itching, and the remedy worked for a few minutes until the mud dried.  I hiked up Barnard Mountain via gentle sloping switchbacks through the woods.  At the top there is a lopsided picnic table that offers a sublime view of Kathadin and much of Baxter State Park. 

I tried my best to savor the grandiosity of the view:  a blanketed forest interrupted by a shining lake.  The rolling hills adjacent to Katahdin made the mountain seem that much bigger as though it belonged in the more impressive ranges of the American west.  It occurred to me that scenery such as this warrants a national park, and I wondered if the day would ever come that Katahdin Woods and Waters would be upgraded from its monument status.  Would Baxter State Park merge into one mega-park?  Should that happen?

The monument is a tranquil place devoid of traffic, thanks largely to the unpaved roads and the lack of signs and advertisements.  During my day and a half in the woods, I saw fewer than ten people, whereas I see at least a thousand per afternoon in Acadia.  Not many people visit the monuments, which often makes them better refuges than the popular parks.  Preserving land is noble, but we also have a habit of ruining a place by setting it aside.  Once a place gains park status, the concessionaires swoop in with their gift shops and restaurants, and soon the tranquility dissipates.  Of course, I champion the idea of adding another park to our collection, and Katahdin Woods and Waters would be deserving as America’s 60^th addition.  Perhaps it is better to leave it alone as a quiet monument, if such an oxymoron is possible.